Flickr Photos

Last week our school, for some inexplicable reason, decided to have a parade through town. It was sports day at our school, which meant a day full of games and fireworks, and apparently parading. More than likely the parade was a sort of PR/advertising campaign for the school, touting our first class educational credentials in front of the town of Kanchanaburi by twirling batons, wailing on xylophones, and dressing up our kindergartners like drag queens. It was incredibly fun in a bizarre sort of way, and of course I took as many photos as I could to capture the shenanigans. After the parade we converged back at our school and finished the day with T-Pop dance offs (That’s the local bastard variation of K-Pop, which the Thai’s are head-over-heals in love with).

Trust me, this parade would not have gone well anywhere else but Thailand, and in certain parts of the States I could imagine the Westboro Baptist Church picketing it. It’s odd seeing your students dressed like little over-sexed pop stars, let alone witnessing a male student following his lady-boy dreams by wearing stiletto heels and a miniskirt and bra made of newspaper…and nothing else. Enjoy the photos.

-Matt

I was honored to carry the French flag…

The xylophones in the marching band were actually pretty cool

Jennifer honored with holding the “Foreign Teacher” sign

Marching into school

From our soccer field looking up at the bilingual program building, where we teach

The newspaper clad representative of the blurry gender lines in Thailand

Yeah another several months pass without any new content, lost once again in the hypnotic patterns of life. Not to worry, there is much to write about and many new and pretty photos to post. Since my last post, we’ve celebrated Thai New Year’s (the festival of water, or “Songkran”), taken another trip down south to the islands of the Andaman Sea, explored the nearby border towns close to Burma, and had a much needed visit to the States to see friends and family. Now back in Thailand for another semester with our school, we’ve settled into our usual rhythms for better or for worse.

Songkran was a weeklong festival in April, the hottest time of the year. It was basically a giant water fight in the streets day after day, culminating in an all-out war on Saturday. Honestly I can’t express nor show through photos how fun and crazy it was. Obviously I couldn’t bring my camera with me anywhere for the whole week, didn’t want it to get soaked. The whole week was a government holiday, so starting around 10am until after dark streets were lined on both sides with water cannons and buckets. You couldn’t go anywhere during those hours without wrapping your stuff in plastic. The festival celebrates the coming New Year by washing away the old bad karma, starting fresh and clean as it were. In addition to the water, powdery clay is mixed into a paste and smeared across each other’s faces, some sort of Buddhist significance that escapes me at the moment. Sometimes Jennifer and I would man a bucket or hose, sometimes we were the ones driving our motorbike through the gauntlet, but for the last three days of the festival we were out in the thick of it until long after dark. Honestly it was the best way to cool off, the temperatures were nearly 109F and our house is a clay oven during the day.

Our school also celebrated with a more traditional ceremony, where the elders and teachers are shown respect by the younger students and parents. Everyone lines up and pours jasmine scented water over your hands in a ritual cleansing for the New Year like I described earlier. I forgot to mention, during this week everyone dons the Songkran attire, Hawaiian shirts! (Well obviously just floral print shirts, but funny still). It was cute to see all the students and teachers wearing ridiculously tacky floral shirts and flower necklaces. Pretty much the only pictures I have of the whole holiday are of the school festival, and even then I had to hide the camera when the water balloons and buckets came out. Not a photogenic festival for that reason.

…and muddy paw prints everywhere. A little over a month ago our porch dog had a litter of puppies. We’ve been watching them grow since they fell out of the womb. Along the way I took some photos of the cuteness. Although it has been cute-overload having them around, it’s a bit tiring cleaning up piddle and paw prints every day and puppy proofing our outdoor living room. Most of my cords have been perforated with puppy teeth.

For a long time the mother, Mo Mam, was fat as a pig and ready to pop. We knew she was going to give birth soon but we didn’t know where. One day after work she didn’t greet us at the driveway as usual, so I started poking around to see where on the property she made her den. After a bit I found her hiding spot, a little cave she made deep in a pile of elephant grass. Still no puppies but apparently she knew to hide out. The next morning we found the her and the puppies in a new den closer to our bungalow. Out of curiosity I walked over to her old den and found a puppy had been left behind. It got stuck under a pile of bamboo poles and we could hear it yelping. After 30 minutes of hacking through the grass and bamboo I pulled out the forgotten little black puppy and brought it over to it’s mother, now with 6 in her litter.

I knew I would get attached to the little rodents, and sure enough I’ve ended up fussing and worrying over them the whole time. One of them, the only boy, dissappeared at 4 weeks. My best guess was someone took him since he was the only boy, and probably good for the mother to have fewer hungry nipple-biters. About a week ago 3 more puppies were given away to various people, just two left on our porch now. Still they manage to run amok and get into trouble, but at least we’re down to mopping once a week instead of once a day.